Alwaght- Israeli regime forces have killed four and injured more than 150 Palestinians on Friday during the peaceful March of Return Protests in besieged Gaza.
The deaths included a 15-year-old boy shot dead in northern Gaza, Palestinian health officials said, adding that 156 people were wounded by Israeli troops' gunfire.
Thousands of Palestinians moved to the border areas in Gaza in order to hold the March of Return for the fourth consecutive Friday. Israeli regime forces provoked and attacked the peaceful Palestinian protestors demanding the right to return to their ancestral territories occupied by the Zionists.
Protests along the Gaza border since March 30 have led to clashes with Israeli forces in which at least 36 Palestinians have lost their lives and thousands others sustained injuries.
UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov condemned Tel Aviv regime's brutal crackdown on Palestinian protesters.
“It is outrageous to shoot at children! How does the killing of a child in Gaza today help peace? It doesn’t! It fuels anger and breeds more killing. Children must be protected from violence, not exposed to it,” Mladenov wrote on Twitter.
The Palestinian rally, dubbed the "Great March of Return," will last until May 15, which coincides with the 70th anniversary of Nakba Day (Day of Catastrophe) on which Israel was created. Every year on May 15, Palestinians all over the world hold demonstrations to commemorate Nakba Day, which marks the anniversary of the forcible eviction of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland by Israelis in 1948.
More than 760,000 Palestinians - now estimated to number nearly five million with their descendants - were driven out of their homes on May 14, 1948.
Since 1948, the Israeli regime has denied Palestinian refugees the right to return, despite UN resolutions and international law that upholds people’s right to return to their homelands.
Meanwhile, Jamie McGoldrick, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator, called on Friday for the protection of Palestinian demonstrators in Gaza alongside support for urgent humanitarian needs.
McGoldrick called for the protection of Palestinian demonstrators and for urgent funding to meet critical humanitarian needs that have been generated by the massive rise in Palestinian casualties in Gaza since 30 March.
